Lake Ontario Waterkeeper

Krystyn Tully, Vice President
krystyn@waterkeeper.ca
(416) 861-1237
Charitable number: 86262 2750 RR0001

Waterkeeper compiles daily beach reports during swimming season.

About this organization

Mission

Lake Ontario Waterkeeper is a federally registered charity working to restore swimmability, drinkability and fishability to Lake Ontario. Lake Ontario Waterkeeper fulfills its mission by educating the public about Lake Ontario and the Great Lakes Basin and by conducting research and public education activities on behalf of the watershed. Our goal is to restore and protect Lake Ontario’s natural resources, as well as contribute to its aesthetic, social, recreational and economic values.

History of Organization

Lake Ontario Waterkeeper was founded by Mark Mattson and Krystyn Tully in 2001. Since then, LOW has grown from a small volunteer driven grassroots charity to an established organization. Lake Ontario Waterkeeper has five full time staff members and an operating budget of $500,000.

In nine years, Waterkeeper has participated in many of the most important environmental decisions and projects in our watershed, including federal and provincial environmental assessments, annual beach monitoring at one hundred public beaches, maintaining a citizen inquiry project to assist individuals with their questions about water quality and environmental law, and submission to the Ontario Energy Board and the Environmental Review Tribunal. We have created programs such as the Clean Water Workshop to mentor law students and the Swim Guide, which provides instant, up-to-date information for over 1,000 beaches.

Lake Ontario Waterkeeper is an independent charity that is affiliated with nearly 190 “Waterkeeper” organizations around the world, including eight others in Canada. In our nine-year history, we have partnered with other environmental organizations, visual artists, performing artists including renowned musicians, authors, business and media leaders and private citizens to restore and protect swimmable, drinkable, fishable water in our watershed.

Accolades and Accomplishments

Our organization has a strong record developing, launching, and growing environmental programs. Some notable achievements include:

Environmental education successes through our Clean Water Workshop. Over the years, nearly 100 law students have gone on to launch careers in environmental law, win awards at legal competitions, and carry their skills and experiences from Waterkeeper into their professions.
Environmental restoration successes through our field investigations and scientific reports. As a result of our work, beach postings at Bluffers Beach in Toronto dropped from 93% of the summer to 20%.
Environmental law and policy achievements including successfully petitioning the Ontario government to make improvements to the Ontario Environmental Assessment Act and defending public participation rights at the Ontario Court of Appeal.

Programs

>Clean Water Workshop
>Swim Guide

Lake Ontario Waterkeeper has a purpose to protect and celebrate Lake Ontario. We have a variety of programs that benefit communities throughout the Lake Ontario watershed including Toronto:

-Every year LOW hosts the Clean Water workshop, a legal workshop for law students from two Universities in Toronto, Osgoode Hall and the University of Toronto.

-Lake Ontario Waterkeeper's Swim Drink Fish Music club connects individuals who care about their water to musicians and artists who share the same values. SDFM subscribers get access to exclusive and rare music plus concert tickets, special events.

-Lake Ontario Waterkeeper helps get you to the beach during the summer with the newly launched Swim Guide app! Use the app and website to find your closest beach, find historical water quality, and determine if the water is safe for swimming in real time. Lake Ontario Waterkeeper's Swim Guide is your only comprehensive swimming resource for Lake Ontario and the Great Lakes basin!

-Waterkeeper.ca Weekly is your direct line to current information about Lake Ontario. Each week we profile a different environmental aspect of the lake and how it impacts your water (good or bad).

-Citizen reports are an important way for Lake Ontario Waterkeeper to know what's going on around your lake. Our Lake Ontario Helps program is in place for you to submit pollution reports, ask questions about projects in the Lake Ontario watershed and discover ways that you can help protect and celebrate your lake.

-Lake Ontario Waterkeeper has a public library in our office at 600 Bay Street, Suite 410. We have hundreds of documents about issues from aggregates and airports to wind turbines and wetlands. Our library includes expert reports, legal submissions, legal reference books and comprehensive reports about Lake Ontario and the watershed. Anyone can use the library and our reference materials during our office hours.

Clean Water Workshop

Since 2004, the Clean Water Workshop has mentored 100 talented law students from three Canadian universities. Students research important issues in environmental law and policy and gain practical experience addressing water issues. When they graduate, they take with them an understanding of environmental law and fair decision-making practices.

The purpose of the workshop is to

•Promote groundbreaking research in the areas of law, policy, decision making and environmental protection;

•Mentor teams of talented law students from Canadian Law Schools, including two top Toronto schools and

•Protect the Canadian environment with particular emphasis on the Great Lakes.

Funding and Program Partners

The Clean Water Workshop has received past support from the Law Foundation of Ontario.

Program Impact

The Clean Water Workshop facilitiates ground-breaking public policy research in the area of water law, educates young lawyers about key principles of environmental law and decision-making, engages the community in formal decision-making processes, and protects the environment by spurring clean-ups, pollution controls, or better monitoring.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

"Urban centres (where more than 80% of Canadians now reside) can magnify environmental problems like air pollution and sprawl, but also have the creative and economic resources to be the laboratories where innovative solutions are generated and tested. Of the 27 cities assessed in the study, representing some of the most populous metropolitan areas in North America, Toronto ranked 9th overall."

(Toronto's Vital Signs® 2011)

Participant Vignette

This Clean Water Workshop was an incredible learning experience, due entirely to the efforts and support of LOW staff, Allie Kosela and Joanna Bull. The project was perfectly designed so that each assignment given built on the previous one, resulting in a strongly crafted and researched final submission. LOW staff provided extremely helpful feedback on all assignments while still allowing the group to take on a high degree of responsibility.

This project was very beneficial to me as it improved my legal research and writing skills and gave me exposure to new areas of law which are not commonly discussed in class. I was so impressed with the organization and their passion for their work that I sought a volunteer position with them.

~Stephen Ronan- Past Clean Water Workshop Participant:

Giving Opportunity

Activities a donation will support

After 7 years, it is time to transform the Clean Water Workshop program, to create a more structured learning curriculum for students, to offer volunter opportunities that extend longer than one year, and to take advantage of emerging internet-based collaboration technologies. Donations will support LOW's efforts to draft a new curriculum for mentoring law students.

Donation impact

The New Clean Water Workshop would enhance beneﬁts to the individual students who participate in the Workshop. The new project structure provides hands-on experience with real legal problems, complementing the theoretical focus of law school.

The New Clean Water Workshop will dramatically increase beneﬁts to residents of our watershed, the people directly affected by water issues. First, the new spring/summer Workshop session will allow us to work on twice as many issues as in the past. Second, the new program structure allows students to work on the deﬁning water issues of their time; their efforts will be channeled into important legal challenges, making their successes more impactful to the local environment.

Swim Guide

Swim Guide is a website and smartphone application showing you where your closest beaches are and telling you which ones have passed water quality tests. Swim Guide is the biggest step forward for beach stewardship in a generation. It creates benchmarking to tell us whether water quality is improving. This enables us to focus on areas that most need our attention.

Swim Guide enables Lake Ontario Waterkeeper to educate thousands of Toronto beach-goers about water issues, double the number of Swim Guide users, create a network of a dozen local businesses who are committed to creating a “Swimmable Toronto”, and create a model program for community beach protection programs.

Funding and Program Partners

Swim Guide has received support from RBC Blue Water Project, McCallum McBride Community Foundation, the Community Foundation for Kingston and Area, and Hertz.

Program Impact

Every person in Toronto should be able to swim at any beach on any day of the summer and never worry about health risks. Swim Guide connects Torontonians to their beaches so that water quality can be improved and protected for generations to come.

Demographics served:

>Age a) all ages

Neighbourhoods Served:

>Toronto Central
>Toronto East
>Toronto North
>Toronto West

Toronto's Vital Signs® Issue Area(s) addressed by Program

>Environment
>Leadership, Civic Engagement, and Belonging

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“8 of Toronto’s 12 beaches were open for swimming more than 80% of the time during the summer of 2010” (Toronto's Vital Signs® 2011)

“More of Toronto’s beaches are meeting the standards for Blue Flag designation.” (Toronto's Vital Signs® 2010)

“Most of Toronto’s beaches are still failing to meet provincial standards.” (Toronto's Vital Signs® 2009)

Giving Opportunity

Activities a donation will support

For every $300 we raise, we can monitor the health of one beach for one summer. For every $1,000 we raise, we can add a new beach to the Swim Guide program. For every $10,000 we raise, we can add a new region or launch a new feature in Swim Guide to better protect public health.

Major donors' support will enable us to launch two specific, key strategic activities. We will develop and implement a public promotion campaign designed to reconnect Torontonians with their beaches. This campaign will double the number of loyal beach-goers in Toronto. We will involve a number of mainstream media partners (e.g., BlogTO, The Grid, Toronto Star, National Post) as well as social media networks. All major print pieces would include recognition of TCF’s support for the project.

We will also develop and implement a promotion campaign directed at local businesses with a stake in healthy beaches (e.g., local cafés and outfitters). This campaign will involve identifying potential stakeholders, preparing communications materials, meeting with potential stakeholders, and securing sponsors and advertisers for the app, website, and in-kind materials. By strengthening the network of businesses who care about Toronto’s beaches, we develop the ability to achieve our healthy beach objectives in the long-term.

The results of this one-year initiative will be documented, best practices identified, and packaged into toolkits or “how-to” resources that we can use and share in the coming years.

Donation impact

With your support, Swim Guide will improve health protections for every Torontonian and restore and protect the beaches used by hundreds of thousands of people each year.

> Print this profile